Ever had an insurance claim denied for a much-needed prosthesis? Lost coverage due to confusing fine print or technicalities? Got saddled with an obscene pharma bill? Struggled to find an affordable ACA plan? Award-winning filmmaker Rachel Handler is training her lens on disabled people who’ve been told, in essence, that their health isn’t profitable enough to pay for.
Handler is using a grant from Adobe to expand her 2020 short “How Much Am I Worth?” into a full-length feature. The original five-minute documentary, an award-winner in the 2020 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, illustrated how the US healthcare system had failed four women with disabilities. The feature-length format will allow Handler to get far more voices into the mix. In addition to a telling a broader range of in-depth stories, she’s planning a coda in which dozens of people share brief summaries of their unhappy run-ins with insurers, hospitals, clinicians, government agencies, and other health system gatekeepers.
“Our goal for the end of the film is to feature at least 50 people talking about denials they’ve received from the health system,” Handler explains. “We want to have short clips where people talk about how their insurance wouldn’t cover their diabetes medication, or they got stuck with an $800 bill for a basic service. The ultimate goal is to focus on how people persevere through these hardships with resilience.”
If you’ve got a story to share, get in touch with Handler via Instagram DM; the project’s handle is @howmuchamiworth. We connected with Handler last week to learn more about the project. Our conversation is edited for length and clarity.
There’s been quite a bit of change in the health care landscape since 2020. Will you track those ups and downs in the film, or are you focus on the landscape as it exists in July 2025, post “Big Beautiful Bill”?
We’ll be focusing on what’s going on in people’s lives right now. So in my case—my own story will be in the film—I’m looking for new health insurance on the ACA marketplace. And it’s really expensive. New York State just doesn’t have good options for freelancers. We’ll probably follow my journey into next year to see if any of the changes in the federal bill affect my coverage and the pricing on the marketplace.
Another person we’ll be featuring uses Medicaid for herself and her children, so it will be interesting to see how those cuts affect her. Andrea, who is a nurse in a wheelchair, hasn’t had a wheelchair covered by insurance in many years, and she’s trying to raise money for a new wheelchair through crowdfunding and sponsorships. The ultimate goal is to be able to track these intense situations from beginning to middle to end, so the audience can get a sense of completion within each story.
You’ve had a number of different films do well in the Disability Film Challenge, and you could have applied for Adobe grants to keep working on any of them. Why did you single out this project as the one you wanted to do something more with?
This one seemed like the obvious choice because it is so timely. Ever since I made it, I’ve been wanting to expand it. I’ve been having people come up to me after they see screenings of it, asking for more information. They want to take it to their elected representatives. So I’ve been wanting to expand this since 2020, because health care and health insurance have only gone downhill from there. I love the other films I’ve done, but this one was my priority.
What’s your your timeline for shooting new footage and doing all the post-production and everything else that needs to occur.
I want to use this grant to produce a sizzle reel that we can show by the end of the year. We’re starting to film in August, and we’re hoping to be done with that by October and start post-production in the fall. We’ll use that to continue fundraising from other sources.
I’m in a documentary filmmakers fellowship, and the director of Patrice came in and talked to us. Patrice is an incredible documentary on Hulu. He told us they shot a sizzle reel—like, four scenes—and pitched that to Hulu, and Hulu loved it and gave them a budget to make the film. That’s really unheard of. We’re hoping that once we have some more footage and that start of a narrative throughline, that will help us get more money involved.
Are there documentaries you have admired that you would like to capture some flavor of?
Well, I want to steal everything Patrice did. It’s so well done, and it’s beautiful to watch. I think our approach will be a little more verite. We want the film participants to sort of forget that we’re there and just capture what’s actually like happening in a very natural way, so we can be as truthful as possible. They did that nicely in Patrice. It’s just the cameraman and the two subjects in a room. That’s sort of the vibe that I would love to have for this.
I also just watched Deaf President Now, and I really loved how well they showed the hardships of being disabled, but also the ridiculous amount of strength we have in our community to overcome and persevere and take charge of our own lives. I want to portray that kind of resilience and empowerment in this film, too.
I have the impression that five years ago, when you made the original short for the Disability Film Challenge, it wouldn’t have been realistic to think about pitching a project like yours to Hulu. But today, that’s a real possibility. What do you think is behind this shift?
I think that people are always fascinated by documentaries, specifically when it comes to the disability community. We’ve always been almost hidden in the shadows, so I think that’s been a really positive shift to get more of our voices out there. But when it comes to narrative storytelling, we still have a really long way to go, especially with casting authentically and making stories that are disability inclusive and authentic. The more we can get these documentaries out the better, because then people in Hollywood can see beyond the stereotypes. I feel like documentary filmmaking is getting it right when it comes to being disability inclusive, and it’s getting the recognition it deserves. But that’s not really the case with narrative fiction filmmaking yet.
